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FINAL TALLY: Robin Hood for Rob breaks $100.

The looming midnight deadline is soon upon us. At last count the Palace had pledged to Rob Zerban’s campaign $89.50 — the exact dollar amount the Democratic leadership solicited from us this week by cynically attempting to scare us with the evil right-wing agenda, while knowing it would use those funds to support conservative Democrats who also support that agenda. They didn’t stop there, of course: we’ve got Nancy Pelosi at 2:00pm ($3) and again at 8:35pm ($3) today, and in between we have Patty Murray ($5) sounding increasingly desperate:

We are down to the final few hours before this first FEC deadline of 2012. Falling short would signal to Karl Rove and the Republican SuperPACs that we don’t have the resources to defend President Obama and Democratic candidates. We simply can’t show that kind of weakness. They would destroy us.

Four years ago Democrats were energized, galvanized and inspired: they poured resources and support behind Hillary Clinton and an upstart Democratic Senator named Barack Obama, both of whom campaigned for President as liberals. Democratic voters had even evicted the conservative pustule that is Joe Lieberman from their party. Why, it was almost as if liberalism resonated with vast numbers of Americans!

I wonder what could possibly have happened in the intervening years to dampen all that enthusiasm? Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for two of those years, and their signature initiative was… entrenching the parasitic health insurance industry for at least a generation. (That is if, in the irony to beat all ironies, the corrupt conservative majority on the Supreme Court doesn’t pull the plug on it.) The U.S. is presently bombing and occupying more Middle Eastern countries than ever before, and our drone program has also expanded throughout the region with an ever-growing pile of civilian corpses to show for it. The lawless and despicable rationale of Guantanamo is still thriving. Those who blow the whistle on government corruption and criminality are locked up and tortured while the architects of the U.S. torture regime are feted as royalty by powerful politicians and major media. The criminals of Wall Street have been let off the hook for their epic fraud and thievery, while the devastated economy barely sputters along in the wake of the mess. Any attempt to pressure government officials into enacting or fighting for the policies on which they campaigned results in their calling those who worked so hard to elect them ungrateful fucking retarded drug addicts.

Gosh, it sure is a mystery.

Anyway! Patty Murray ominously warns us:

Missing this goal would put the Republicans one step closer to total control of Washington — and the end of Medicare and women’s rights as we know them.

Maybe it will take the end of Medicare and women’s rights as we know them to finally get people taking to the streets in numbers large enough to scare America’s Owners into throwing us a bone or two on the Bush tax cuts, numbers large enough to frighten the wingnuts into keeping their 15th century fantasyland to themselves for a fucking change.

Rob Zerban cannot fix our broken political system any more than voting alone can. But win or lose, just running candidates like him can push the Democratic party to the left. At least we know what doesn’t work: electing and reelecting “Democrats,” no matter what they do once in office.

Thus it is with great pleasure that Perry Street Palace hereby bequeaths $100.50 to Rob Zerban (via ActBlue). Go get ’em Rob.

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About Iris Vander Pluym

Iris Vander Pluym is an artist and activist in NYC (West Village), and an unapologetic, godless, feminist lefty. Raised to believe Nice Girls™ do not discuss politics, sex or religion, it turns out those are pretty much the only topics she ever wants to talk about.